The Devil May Care (Brotherhood of Sinners #1) (30 page)

She must have sensed the change in him. She pulled back suddenly, and she was watching him, looking confused. “Sebastian?” she asked tentatively. “Are you all right? Have I done something wrong?”

“No, sweetheart. Just be still a moment.” He held her against him, not allowing either one of them to move. He tried to clear his mind, to bring cool reason back.

I’m supposed to protect her
, he found himself thinking
. I’m supposed to keep her safe.
And in his mind’s eye, he saw the image of her again at the Baronesa de Talandrina’s, standing with her back to him as Victoire de Laurent pointed a pistol her chest.

His breath hitched in remembered fear.

I have to keep her safe
.

And then it was as if someone had clapped a pair of cymbals in the middle of his brain. The memory crystallized, focusing on Victoire’s face as she looked in frightened amazement at the woman she thought was Sal, the woman she believed was dead.

Damn it—how had he not realized this before?. Victoire was frightened, and Victoire was
surprised
.

She hadn’t known Sal was coming.

Good God. Whoever it was had sent the French warship after the Calliope, it wasn’t Victoire de Laurent. They had another enemy, and he’d let himself become too distracted by his feelings for Rachel to put the pieces together.

And if that enemy had tried to kill Rachel once before . . .

He pushed Rachel away from him now. “I’m sorry,” he said roughly. He rose to his feet. The cooler air seemed to scrape against his skin.

Rachel sat up, a look of shock and hurt on her face. “Sebastian?”

He reached out to tug her jumbled skirts back to her ankles, and yanked her bodice back up over her bosom.

She’d given him a shield, and he’d damned well use it to protect her.

He couldn’t afford to let desire muddle his thinking anymore. He made himself as icy and heartless as he knew how to be.

“Go to your own room, love,” he said, taking her arm to lift her from the bed. “And I’ll stay in mine. You know everything you need to know already to drive a man to madness. There’s nothing more you need from me.”

Chapter Seventeen

Rachel
snatched up a book from Sarah’s shelf at random, just to clutch it to her chest. She threw herself on the bed and drew up a heavy quilt. She wanted, needed, weight pressing down upon her, to quell the sensation that she was splitting apart at the seams.

With what Sebastian had confessed to her, she had the last piece of the puzzle of Sal’s life, and her death. It was like in childhood, probing the gap of a lost tooth with her tongue. Sore, but also a relief. The jagged pain was gone, and healing could begin.

She was grateful to know it.

It was what happened after their conversation that truly left her raw and hurting.

Her body still throbbed and ached with desire—her skin burned where the faint traces of Sebastian’s whiskers had rasped against her skin.

Her heart felt like it had been kicked.

She’d felt such an aching well of tenderness towards him for what he’d gone through, thinking himself to blame for Sarah’s death. And he’d caressed her and kissed her as though she were the only thing that mattered, as though she were his one hope of survival.

And then he’d booted her out.

Tossed her from the room like a—like a meal he’d found over-salted.

Like she was nothing.

Like the light she seen in his eyes as he looked at her had been no more substantial than a will-o-the-wisp.

But what else should she have expected from Lord Gargoyle?

What use was she here in Vigo anyway? In all the days since she’d left Lancashire, what had she accomplished? She’d fooled one or two silly aristocrats into believing her sister still lived, and she’d driven Victoire de Laurent back into hiding.

Useless. She was
useless
, just as Sebastian had judged her when he first set eyes on her.

Unless, of course, she could find the notebook Sarah had stolen from Victoire de Laurent.

The thought of it was like finding a patch of dry and solid ground on an icy road, as if she found some unexpected footing and had control of herself once more.

She sat up and cast her gaze around the room.
Sebastian said this room had been carefully searched after Sarah’s death. Nothing had been found. That didn’t mean nothing was
here
—Sarah had been good at lying, good at hiding things. Perhaps it could be found by someone who knew Sarah’s mind, whose mind worked like hers.

In a room full of books, someone might have missed something.

Systematically, Rachel began to remove volumes from the shelves, running her thumb over the pages to fan them, looking for any signs of cryptographic writing. Nearly every book had Sarah’s commentary inked in the margins, in a variety of languages, but except for what was in Greek, most of it was in Roman letters, or in that simple cipher she and Sarah had used back home.

After an hour, piles of books heaped the floor.

Exhaustion and despair were getting the better of her, when suddenly she opened a volume of Tacitus that had been tucked behind a row of other Latin texts, and her heart jumped: these pages had strange strings of symbols along the margins—not Greek or Roman letters, and not their familiar childhood cipher either.

Whatever it was, the writing had the look of Sarah’s hand, in her favorite blue ink. Rachel carried the book under the lamp that glowed on the desk and drew it up close to her eyes to examine the details. A few of the symbols looked similar to ones from the ciphering games she and Sarah played as girls, though they weren’t identical. Almost surely Sarah’s invention, then, not something she’d stolen from the French.

Rachel counted: 23 distinct symbols, the same number as the classical Latin alphabet. Latin notes, then? With some simple substitution of symbols for letters? A cross for L, perhaps, or a circle within a circle for D?

Nothing she was trying to hide from a serious enemy, then. But perhaps it was something.

The trick to breaking such a cipher was to notice frequency, and order. Mr. Rapson had taught them the method, all those years ago. The most common letters in Latin were E, I, T, and A, most often as the second or last letter of a word. M or S also ended many words, but no Latin words ended with F, Q, H, G, Y, Z or P. Infrequent symbols were likely to be rare letters—D or B. And certain combinations would occur frequently: US, ENT, TIS, IUM. A little time, a little guesswork, and process of elimination were usually all it took.

She let her eyes run over the page. The Tacitus markings included many instances of an s-shaped swirl with a line looping back through the middle, rather like a treble clef.

A good candidate for E, I. or T.

Better still, a particular cluster of letters—seven characters long—appeared several times, and twice on one page. A thrill shot through her. The word had none of the treble-clefs. But another symbol, a circle topped by a line, came both first and third-to-last, and appeared several other times on the page as well.

The second letter and final symbols were also high-frequency, perhaps E or A, but the second-to-last letter—a sort of sideways lightning bolt—appeared only one other time on the page. Perhaps a C or an X, especially if that last letter was in fact E.

Or a U, if the last letter was an S.

And then the word simply came to her, as though her eyes found the right focus:
Tacitus
.

Simple as that: the repeated word was
Tacitus
.

Of course—Sarah had been commenting on what Tacitus was saying in the book.

Rachel fell back on the floor, half-laughing, hugging the book to her chest.

She had it then. Taking up a blank piece of paper and a lead pencil, she set to work. A little trial and error, and soon she’d be able to decipher the rest.

When she broke this cipher, perhaps it would reveal nothing more than Sarah’s critique of Tacitus’ account of the military campaigns of the Huns. Hardly the key to a stunning victory over Napoleon.

But at least it felt like progress.

* * *

Sebastian lay on his bed, cursing himself, watching the trail of the sun crawl across his wall.

He was a fool, a hundred times over.

Blinded by emotion, he’d missed the critical proof that someone besides Victoire de Laurent was on the hunt for them. He’d put Rachel in more danger than ever. How stupid, how selfish, how . . .
weak
.

Telling her what he’d told her about Sal’s death was something he’d needed to do; he’d owed her that, and he still had his own penance to pay. But even without that secret hanging between them, he had no business trying to claim her body more than he had already, and he certainly had no right to claim her affections. Hadn’t he sworn that since the very beginning of this business? If he got her out alive, he’d get her out without the burden of any entanglement with him. She deserved the possibility of a future—the future he’d cost Sal.

She’d just taken him by surprise, listening to his confession with such gentleness, such compassion. He’d disgorged this awful, dark, heavy truth, and she hadn’t shied away. Hadn’t blamed him, or hated him. She’d taken his hands, and kissed him, and offered herself so willingly. An ache went through him now that had nothing to do with his body.

He felt a need for her that he didn’t even know how to name.

But he pushed it away. Rachel had spent most of her life schooling herself in restraint; she could find it in herself again. And he could certainly get himself back under control.

He wasn’t supposed to be flesh and blood.

Of course, after he’d left her, he’d seemed nothing
but
flesh and blood—the cockstand he had might have killed a lesser man. That, at least, he dispatched with ruthless efficiency. He’d needed just a few good, fierce strokes, thinking of her, imagining thrusting inside her, imagining that wet, burning sheath he’d plunged his fingers into welcoming the full length of his shaft. The thought of her flesh sliding against him like wet velvet, her inner muscles clutching and pulsing around his cock as she moaned his name, drove him to explosion. He pumped ferociously into his palm, coming in a hard, hot jet.

His chest heaved. His hips and shoulders collapsed back onto the mattress as if he’d been thrown there from several feet away.

There. Better
.
Relief
. It’s what he should have done in the first place, and spared them both a world of trouble.

Well, he wouldn’t touch her anymore. He absolutely wouldn’t.

He rolled out of bed, washed himself hastily, pulled on fresh clothing—simple trousers, a peasant’s shirt and jacket. He had to get to work. He had to figure out what was really going on here, underneath the surface. He should have received those dispatches by now from—what was the full name Rachel called him? The Black Giant?

An amusing name for him. Like something from a fairy tale. And it suited him far better than his Christian name, which was about as fitting as a wolf named Pussycat.

What would Rachel say if she learned the Giant’s name was William?

And that he was a peer of the realm?

The message Will had sent through Emilio this morning said he’d brought dispatches from England, and had other news of some sort. Perhaps there would be word of the ship that had attacked the
Calliope
. A chance for revenge in that area would be sweet indeed.

And, come to think of it, it would be a pleasure to make him pay for taking Rachel to see the chapel. That place was Sebastian’s own purgatory, his own penance. Slamming his fists a few dozen times into Will’s jaw would feel very satisfying just about now. The Giant could certainly take it, and knew damned well he deserved it.

Sebastian strode down the stairs to the kitchens with fresh enthusiasm.

To his surprise, Will was already there, a scraped-clean plate before him, and the scent of ham and bread and coffee in the air, brightened by the tang of oranges.

Evangelina sat next to him on the bench, her head resting against his sleeve, and she was swinging her legs and chattering happily about something. Will, as he often did, was actually looking down at the child kindly, with a smile in his eyes, if not on his lips.

They’d always been this way together, though it never stopped seeming odd. Eva was the only person he knew of other than Sal who’d ever seemed comfortable around Will.

Rosa hovered by the fireplace, wielding her ladle as if she might need to use it as a weapon. She’d never managed to convince herself that the huge man with the long black hair was entirely civilized, and—just as she might have with some wild bear which regularly wandered into her kitchen—she seemed to deal with the situation by feeding him as much as possible, trying to render him stupefied, perhaps, or at least beyond the point of further appetite.